It's All True: undeveloped footage
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Le Chiffre
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Roger Ryan
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In today's Detroit Free Press review of the DVD release of "It's All True", critic Terry Lawson claims that all "related footage and materials (from the film) have recently been donated to the University of Michigan."
Detroit Free Press DVD Review
Detroit Free Press DVD Review
I saw that Free Press article this morning; I doubt that U of M (through Welles scholar Catherine Benamou, who teaches there) acquired "all related materials" since UCLA has all that footage and the Lilly has an array of production materials also, but it's good news regardless.
The DVD, which I found over the weekend, is essentially a glorified VHS tape, albeit with better picture. Chapter stops are about the only frill added on. A film like this would have benefited enormously from some kind of extra, be it filmed or otherwise, in which the project was put into some kind of context, that would allow someone not totally into Welles to understand more of the material. As I said though, picture quality is pretty good, though sometimes a little soft. It still has that ugly-ass cover that was used for the VHS release, too. But, if you want to upgrade from VHS or never picked it up, it's cheap enough at about $12 to be worth it.
The DVD, which I found over the weekend, is essentially a glorified VHS tape, albeit with better picture. Chapter stops are about the only frill added on. A film like this would have benefited enormously from some kind of extra, be it filmed or otherwise, in which the project was put into some kind of context, that would allow someone not totally into Welles to understand more of the material. As I said though, picture quality is pretty good, though sometimes a little soft. It still has that ugly-ass cover that was used for the VHS release, too. But, if you want to upgrade from VHS or never picked it up, it's cheap enough at about $12 to be worth it.
From the NEW YORK TIMES review of October 15, 1993...
Film Festival Review: Reconstructing the Tale Of a Wellesian Disaster
By VINCENT CANBY
In terms of cinema history and scholarship, the highlight of this year's New York Film Festival is the presentation of "It's All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles." This is the story of the aborted production of the master's 1942 Latin American, three-part "It's All True." The documentary will be shown at the festival today at 6:15 P.M. and tomorrow at 9 P.M. Both screenings are sold out, but the film begins a regular run in Manhattan on Sunday. It's a must-see.
The events surrounding the making of "It's All True" aren't mysterious but, like so many chapters in Welles's professional life, they are full of production complications, financial problems and the interference of money men who never see themselves as made of money. Conspiring in the disaster was Welles's own tendency to be high of hand, loving of fun and casual about schedules set by others.
The initial conception of "It's All True": Welles was already planning an anthology film in 1941 when he was approached by Nelson Rockefeller, who was a large stockholder in RKO Pictures (Welles's studio) and the coordinator of the Office of Inter-American Affairs. Rockefeller's idea was for Welles to make an entertainment film to help promote President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy.
It was a busy time for Welles. He was finishing work on "The Magnificent Ambersons" and acting in "Journey Into Fear," which he had supervised though it was being directed by Norman Foster. By chance he had earlier envisioned a short film about a Mexican boy and his bull, "My Friend Bonito," which was to be one of the three segments in the RKO-produced, Government-promoted movie celebrating Latin America. He decided that the second segment would center on the annual carnival in Rio de Janeiro, and that the third would be determined when he arrived in Rio.
In those youthful days, Welles was full of energy and magnificent self-assurance. Yet "It's All True" seems never to have been thought through with any realistic sense of time, place and money. He oversaw the shooting of several sequences of "My Friend Bonito" in Mexico and then, in February 1942, took off for Rio with both Technicolor and black-and-white cameras to photograph the carnival.
That did not go easily, but he did get the idea to use the story of the history of the samba as one of the principal themes of what became the two Brazilian segments. The second segment was to be a re-enactment of the story of four Brazilian fishermen from the northeast who, the year before, had caused a sensation when they sailed their tiny fishing raft across 1,600 miles of open ocean to Rio to seek redress for social ills.
RKO officials quickly panicked about the money Welles was spending in Rio without having a finished script. The carnival material they saw was formless. But they truly hit the ceiling when Welles's interest turned to Rio's favelas (mountainside slums) and blacks in his search for the samba's roots. Poor people, particularly poor black people, did not fit into any good neighbor policy that RKO or the United States State Department wanted to publicize.
The production was halted in midstream by RKO, but Welles persisted in his efforts to finish the film's third segment, "Four Men on a Raft," with a modest budget and primitive equipment. This material, which he shot but never edited, changed hands several times and then was lost. Some of it was destroyed. In 1985, the year Welles died, the surviving material was found in a Paramount vault.
Because there was no screenplay, Richard Wilson, Welles's assistant in Brazil, used letters and memorandums to put together a 22-minute version of "Four Men on a Raft," which was shown at the 1986 Venice Film Festival. That material remains the heart of the new documentary.
The new film also makes use of the remaining Technicolor carnival material and several sequences from "My Friend Bonito," all supplemented by filmed interviews with Welles, both as a young man and in later years; with Wilson, who died of cancer in 1991; with other associates, and with some of the Brazilian members of the project who are still alive.
It's the black-and-white material from "Four Men on a Raft" and "My Friend Bonito" that gives the documentary its importance. There is the initial surprise at the way it recalls the look and style of the great Russian film maker Sergei Eisenstein in his monumental "Que Viva Mexico!" (1930-31), a project almost as cursed as "It's All True." Planned as four distinct stories, with a prologue and an epilogue, "Que Viva Mexico!" was taken away from Eisenstein by his American partners before he could put it together. It was later edited into four separate films that could only hazily suggest what Eisenstein would have done. Yet the Eisenstein material was preserved and, if not honored, it was at least used. Welles's material was casually trashed.
Both "Four Men on a Raft" and "My Friend Bonito" have the gloriously liquid look of the heavily filtered, black-and-white photography favored in the 1930's to ennoble peasants and other common folk. It's corny and possibly condescending, but it still works. Glauber Rocha, a leading talent in Brazil's own Cinema Novo movement, used the same style in his "Barravento" (1961), which is set in the fishing villages of Bahia.
Of special interest is the funeral procession sequence in "Four Men on a Raft," a stunning preview of the even more remarkable sequence that would later open Welles's "Othello." "It's All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles" might have been even more fascinating if Welles's raw material hadn't been so smoothly edited that it's impossible to tell how sequences were put together, what was saved and what was discarded. Such a film would be unwieldy, if of more scholarly interest.
Though Welles's own "It's All True" remained unfinished, its place in history is firm: if Welles had not undertaken the project, the chances are that his greatest film, "The Magnificent Ambersons," would not have been butchered by the studio while he was flying down in Rio.
This documentary is a long, seductive footnote to a cinema legend.
It's All True
Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles
Directed by Richard Wilson, Myron Meisel and Bill Krohn; written by Mr. Krohn, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Meisel; photography for "Four Men on a Raft," George Fanto; director of photography, Gary Graver; edited by Ed Marx; music by Jorge Arriagada; produced by Regine Konckier, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Krohn, Mr. Meisel and Jean-Luc Ormieres; released by Paramount Pictures. At Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, as part of the 31st New York Film Festival. Running time: 89 minutes. This film is rated G. Narrator: Miguel Ferrer.
Film Festival Review: Reconstructing the Tale Of a Wellesian Disaster
By VINCENT CANBY
In terms of cinema history and scholarship, the highlight of this year's New York Film Festival is the presentation of "It's All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles." This is the story of the aborted production of the master's 1942 Latin American, three-part "It's All True." The documentary will be shown at the festival today at 6:15 P.M. and tomorrow at 9 P.M. Both screenings are sold out, but the film begins a regular run in Manhattan on Sunday. It's a must-see.
The events surrounding the making of "It's All True" aren't mysterious but, like so many chapters in Welles's professional life, they are full of production complications, financial problems and the interference of money men who never see themselves as made of money. Conspiring in the disaster was Welles's own tendency to be high of hand, loving of fun and casual about schedules set by others.
The initial conception of "It's All True": Welles was already planning an anthology film in 1941 when he was approached by Nelson Rockefeller, who was a large stockholder in RKO Pictures (Welles's studio) and the coordinator of the Office of Inter-American Affairs. Rockefeller's idea was for Welles to make an entertainment film to help promote President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy.
It was a busy time for Welles. He was finishing work on "The Magnificent Ambersons" and acting in "Journey Into Fear," which he had supervised though it was being directed by Norman Foster. By chance he had earlier envisioned a short film about a Mexican boy and his bull, "My Friend Bonito," which was to be one of the three segments in the RKO-produced, Government-promoted movie celebrating Latin America. He decided that the second segment would center on the annual carnival in Rio de Janeiro, and that the third would be determined when he arrived in Rio.
In those youthful days, Welles was full of energy and magnificent self-assurance. Yet "It's All True" seems never to have been thought through with any realistic sense of time, place and money. He oversaw the shooting of several sequences of "My Friend Bonito" in Mexico and then, in February 1942, took off for Rio with both Technicolor and black-and-white cameras to photograph the carnival.
That did not go easily, but he did get the idea to use the story of the history of the samba as one of the principal themes of what became the two Brazilian segments. The second segment was to be a re-enactment of the story of four Brazilian fishermen from the northeast who, the year before, had caused a sensation when they sailed their tiny fishing raft across 1,600 miles of open ocean to Rio to seek redress for social ills.
RKO officials quickly panicked about the money Welles was spending in Rio without having a finished script. The carnival material they saw was formless. But they truly hit the ceiling when Welles's interest turned to Rio's favelas (mountainside slums) and blacks in his search for the samba's roots. Poor people, particularly poor black people, did not fit into any good neighbor policy that RKO or the United States State Department wanted to publicize.
The production was halted in midstream by RKO, but Welles persisted in his efforts to finish the film's third segment, "Four Men on a Raft," with a modest budget and primitive equipment. This material, which he shot but never edited, changed hands several times and then was lost. Some of it was destroyed. In 1985, the year Welles died, the surviving material was found in a Paramount vault.
Because there was no screenplay, Richard Wilson, Welles's assistant in Brazil, used letters and memorandums to put together a 22-minute version of "Four Men on a Raft," which was shown at the 1986 Venice Film Festival. That material remains the heart of the new documentary.
The new film also makes use of the remaining Technicolor carnival material and several sequences from "My Friend Bonito," all supplemented by filmed interviews with Welles, both as a young man and in later years; with Wilson, who died of cancer in 1991; with other associates, and with some of the Brazilian members of the project who are still alive.
It's the black-and-white material from "Four Men on a Raft" and "My Friend Bonito" that gives the documentary its importance. There is the initial surprise at the way it recalls the look and style of the great Russian film maker Sergei Eisenstein in his monumental "Que Viva Mexico!" (1930-31), a project almost as cursed as "It's All True." Planned as four distinct stories, with a prologue and an epilogue, "Que Viva Mexico!" was taken away from Eisenstein by his American partners before he could put it together. It was later edited into four separate films that could only hazily suggest what Eisenstein would have done. Yet the Eisenstein material was preserved and, if not honored, it was at least used. Welles's material was casually trashed.
Both "Four Men on a Raft" and "My Friend Bonito" have the gloriously liquid look of the heavily filtered, black-and-white photography favored in the 1930's to ennoble peasants and other common folk. It's corny and possibly condescending, but it still works. Glauber Rocha, a leading talent in Brazil's own Cinema Novo movement, used the same style in his "Barravento" (1961), which is set in the fishing villages of Bahia.
Of special interest is the funeral procession sequence in "Four Men on a Raft," a stunning preview of the even more remarkable sequence that would later open Welles's "Othello." "It's All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles" might have been even more fascinating if Welles's raw material hadn't been so smoothly edited that it's impossible to tell how sequences were put together, what was saved and what was discarded. Such a film would be unwieldy, if of more scholarly interest.
Though Welles's own "It's All True" remained unfinished, its place in history is firm: if Welles had not undertaken the project, the chances are that his greatest film, "The Magnificent Ambersons," would not have been butchered by the studio while he was flying down in Rio.
This documentary is a long, seductive footnote to a cinema legend.
It's All True
Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles
Directed by Richard Wilson, Myron Meisel and Bill Krohn; written by Mr. Krohn, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Meisel; photography for "Four Men on a Raft," George Fanto; director of photography, Gary Graver; edited by Ed Marx; music by Jorge Arriagada; produced by Regine Konckier, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Krohn, Mr. Meisel and Jean-Luc Ormieres; released by Paramount Pictures. At Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, as part of the 31st New York Film Festival. Running time: 89 minutes. This film is rated G. Narrator: Miguel Ferrer.
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Sir Bygber Brown
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Finally got around to picking up "It's All True" and I was very surprised by "Four Men on a Raft".
I agree with the NY Times review about the editing (and the music ...almost had to turn it down and watch it silent), but the photography was breathtaking! Seeing 'shots' he would later explore in other films ...like the clouds in "Don Quixote", can be seen over the sea and in single frames alone (Like in Kurosawa's "Ran"). Can't believe that this has never really been heralded as "A LOST WELLES FILM FOUND" type release to the public - rather low-key and forgotten about ...at least here in the UK.
Shame it's been buried on a crappy DVD with a truly horrendous cover!
I agree with the NY Times review about the editing (and the music ...almost had to turn it down and watch it silent), but the photography was breathtaking! Seeing 'shots' he would later explore in other films ...like the clouds in "Don Quixote", can be seen over the sea and in single frames alone (Like in Kurosawa's "Ran"). Can't believe that this has never really been heralded as "A LOST WELLES FILM FOUND" type release to the public - rather low-key and forgotten about ...at least here in the UK.
Shame it's been buried on a crappy DVD with a truly horrendous cover!
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Harvey Chartrand
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I was totally absorbed by the IT'S ALL TRUE documentary narrated by Miguel Ferrer, but could barely stay awake during FOUR MEN ON A RAFT – which was sold as the big payoff. I couldn't bear the thought that THIS is what Welles chose to work on instead of the final edit of AMBERSONS. I was also unimpressed by the surviving footage of MY FRIEND BONITO (simply because that kind of family-oriented story is not my bag), but I would love to see the millions of feet of Rio Carnival street scenes edited into some semblance of order. Who knows, maybe Rick Schmidlin would take on the Rio project pro bono. (I visited Rio once and remember driving past Botafogo Bay and thinking – This is where Welles' directing career died, when the shark ate the fisherman who sailed down there from northern Brazil.)
I'm with you, Alan. The cinematography in Four Men in a Raft is beautiful. As it stands, it has to be one of my favorite silent films.
Couldn't stay awake through it? That says more about the viewer than it does the film. As for the statement that Welles chose to film It's All True instead of finishing Ambersons, everyone who visits this board knows that isn't true. Welles planned on editing Ambersons while also working on It's All True, and his track record fully demonstrates that he was perfectly capable at that sort of multi-tasking. He was expecting Robert Wise to go to Brazil to assist with the editing of Ambersons, but Wise was unable to travel to Brazil for certain reasons, etc. And for the rest of the details consult any number of books on the subject.
Couldn't stay awake through it? That says more about the viewer than it does the film. As for the statement that Welles chose to film It's All True instead of finishing Ambersons, everyone who visits this board knows that isn't true. Welles planned on editing Ambersons while also working on It's All True, and his track record fully demonstrates that he was perfectly capable at that sort of multi-tasking. He was expecting Robert Wise to go to Brazil to assist with the editing of Ambersons, but Wise was unable to travel to Brazil for certain reasons, etc. And for the rest of the details consult any number of books on the subject.
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Harvey Chartrand
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I think FOUR MEN ON A RAFT would make a nice screensaver, but as a film, it sucks. Welles sometimes goofed (THE IMMORTAL STORY is another guaranteed cure for insomnia.)
When Welles was great, there was nobody better. Same with Huston – the genius who gave us FREUD and THE ASPHALT JUNGLE also cranked out SINFUL DAVEY and PHOBIA. Nobody always bats a thousand, not even Orson.
As for Welles' decision to go to Brazil, no less an authority than Frank Brady (in CITIZEN WELLES) deemed the decision to helm IT'S ALL TRUE as "insane." Welles should have known better. No point crying over burned celluloid, but with the world at war and telephone connections between LA & Rio extremely unreliable, the boy wonder genius should quite simply have known better. Because this decision ruined Welles' life and career and forever set back the cause of world cinema.
Welles's decision to focus on race relations while in Rio, although admirable and visionary, also got him into serious trouble with Brazilian authorities and the boys back at RKO, according to Brady.
When Welles was great, there was nobody better. Same with Huston – the genius who gave us FREUD and THE ASPHALT JUNGLE also cranked out SINFUL DAVEY and PHOBIA. Nobody always bats a thousand, not even Orson.
As for Welles' decision to go to Brazil, no less an authority than Frank Brady (in CITIZEN WELLES) deemed the decision to helm IT'S ALL TRUE as "insane." Welles should have known better. No point crying over burned celluloid, but with the world at war and telephone connections between LA & Rio extremely unreliable, the boy wonder genius should quite simply have known better. Because this decision ruined Welles' life and career and forever set back the cause of world cinema.
Welles's decision to focus on race relations while in Rio, although admirable and visionary, also got him into serious trouble with Brazilian authorities and the boys back at RKO, according to Brady.
Welles is definitely not for everyone. He didn't make films for the bread and circus crowd. As he admitted in his interview with Bogdonovich, he didn't make films to entertain. He wanted them to be an experience, but not necessarily entertaining. Therefore, if some of his films fall a little short in the entertainment category, and cause some in the audience to become bored, you might call it a flaw in his style. But fortunately you don't have to go too far if you only watch films to be entertained. Hollywood has perfected the output of bread and circus down to a science.
As to his choice to go to Rio, I'm not convinced that his decision was "insane." How would Orson know about phone connections between Rio and LA? Furthermore, he was expecting Robert Wise to join him in Rio, and that he would have access to a moviola while he was there. No long distance calls were needed if Wise and a moviola were available in Brazil. Also, the fact that the choice he made - which was made under strong social pressure - ultimately caused his downfall, is not a reason to second guess his decision. I don't think you can judge a person's conduct with twenty-twenty hindsight. All blame for the decision to massacre Ambersons rests on the people who made that decision - the management of RKO. There's a decision that truly merits the word "insane."
As to his choice to go to Rio, I'm not convinced that his decision was "insane." How would Orson know about phone connections between Rio and LA? Furthermore, he was expecting Robert Wise to join him in Rio, and that he would have access to a moviola while he was there. No long distance calls were needed if Wise and a moviola were available in Brazil. Also, the fact that the choice he made - which was made under strong social pressure - ultimately caused his downfall, is not a reason to second guess his decision. I don't think you can judge a person's conduct with twenty-twenty hindsight. All blame for the decision to massacre Ambersons rests on the people who made that decision - the management of RKO. There's a decision that truly merits the word "insane."
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Roger Ryan
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I'm not certain one can judge "Four Men And A Raft" as a finished Welles film. Most believe Welles would have used narration throughout the piece (throughout all of "It's All True" probably). Imagine watching any of the "Around The World With Orson Welles" TV episodes without Welles' narration and the experience would be similar to watching "Four Men..." today. The difference being that unlike the fairly rough documentary look of "Around The World...", "Four Men..." is beautifully staged and shot. The scene where the little girl finds the boy's corpse in the water and rushes back to the village is one of Welles' most stunning visual sequences ever. True, the film loses momentum once the fishermen actually begin their journey, but who's to say that Welles wouldn't have created something truly dynamic out of this with his narration and storytelling ability.
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ToddBaesen
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Tony:
Thanks for posting the material about IT'S ALL TRUE that will be shown at UCLA. It should be an interesting program. I trust anyone from the LA area who goes will give us a report.
It's also interesting that with all the new reels that have been recovered, Paramount might be wise to re-visit IT'S ALL TRUE with an expanded version on DVD. What would be really fabulous is if a new score could be done using some of the original song material Welles intended. Certainly it would be better than the score that was used on the current DVD.
Thanks for posting the material about IT'S ALL TRUE that will be shown at UCLA. It should be an interesting program. I trust anyone from the LA area who goes will give us a report.
It's also interesting that with all the new reels that have been recovered, Paramount might be wise to re-visit IT'S ALL TRUE with an expanded version on DVD. What would be really fabulous is if a new score could be done using some of the original song material Welles intended. Certainly it would be better than the score that was used on the current DVD.
Todd
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Le Chiffre
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there is a larger text and story to be rescued from the cans stacked up in the UCLA collection and yet labeled It's All True. They are 68,145 feet corresponding to My Friend Bonito 32,000 feet in black-and- white, and 3,000 feet in Technicolor corresponding to Carnival, and 48,500 feet in black-and-white of Jangadeiros. This material still needs to be preserved.
Here are some less-then-flattering but interesting trimmings from Charles Higham's RISE AND FALL OF AN AMERICAN GENIUS. Higham says Welles, while shooting Ambersons, was so thrilled by the MY FRIEND BONITO footage shot by Norman Foster in Mexico that he decided to appoint him as co-director on the film. Foster had shot much of BONITO while not only battling dysentery, but also facing terrible weather, camera trouble, governmental red tape, and bandits constantly threatening the crew. But after Pear Harbor was bombed and Welles was asked to go to Rio, he revised his schedule and decided to rush JOURNEY INTO FEAR ( a project imposed on him by RKO) into production.
Higham:
"Just when he should have gone to Joseph Breen and told him that Mercury was appointing Norman Foster the official director of MY FRIEND BONITO, he foolishly recalled Foster from Mexico. Instead of giving JOURNEY INTO FEAR to another director, he insisted that Foster take it over.
"Much as he loved Orson, Foster was angered, shocked, and maddened by this disastrous mistake to the day he died. MY FRIEND BONITO was firmly on it's way to being a masterpiece, while JOURNEY INTO FEAR was a badly written jumble, devoid of artistic merit. Foster had never had a chance to prepare it or to read the script. Stopping MY FRIEND BONITO in mid-production meant that all the weeks of agonizing work- the sicknesses, the delays, and the great artistic acheivement, were discarded like a toy tossed aside by an impetuous child. Foster made embarrassed explanations to the members of his Mexican network and left the country he loved with the tatters of the unfinished work in his hands.
"The day after Foster returned to Hollywood, December 23, MY FRIEND BONITO was officially cancelled for an indefinite period. A bad-tempered and irritable Foster began work on JOURNEY INTO FEAR. He directed without enthusiasm.
"Welles was dashing from set to set of AMBERSONS, dashing over to JOURNEY INTO FEAR, driving himself and everyone else into a frazzle...If only he had allowed his second unit to shoot in Rio until he was ready, as he had done with MY FRIEND BONITO, he might have saved much of the agony that was to follow. But he was in a hurry, and wanted to enjoy the publicity that he was promised would greet him on his arrival."
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